Tag Archives: correa

Now that Pope Francis’ visit to South America has ended we can reflect on the Rupert Murdoch’s effort to slam Pope Francis and Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa using the pretext of the Pope’s recent visit here. The Wall Street Journal warned “Ecuador’s Correa Wants to Co-Opt Pope Francis: The pontiff risks leaving the impression on his visit that the church condones repression.” Given that Pope Francis is Argentine, the idea that the Murdoch’s minions needed to inform and warn the Pope about President Correa is very funny.

Murdoch’s minions are always reaching for a thesaurus of insults when they write about Correa, and this article is no exception. The title: “condones repression” gets the verbal assault going quickly. But the minions are only warming to their task and are a bit repetitive, warning in the second paragraph that “the visit is likely to leave the impression that the church is in solidarity with the repressive Correa machine.” Note the addition of “machine” at the end of that agitprop.

President Obama and then Secretary of State Clinton decided that America has a critical shortage of banksters and decided to import some from Ecuador. The banksters showed their gratitude by showing the Democratic Party with “donations.” Sometimes a small story reveals the core truth of large public policy issues far better than the big overall story can. The New York Times has just published an article entitled “Ecuador Family Wins Favors After Donations to Democrats.” The short-version is that Obama has decided to give what amounts to asylum to a family from Ecuador after it made large campaign donations to Democrats.

“It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaías family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.

I was peacefully reading a BBC article on Ecuador’s plans to introduce a digital currency to bring banking services to the rural poor, when in the midst of the article the anonymous author decided to attack President Rafael Correa because Ecuador borrows money from China.

“Ecuador introduced the US dollar as its currency after a crippling bank crisis in 2000. Since then, the government has tripled social spending and the state is currently billions in debt, mostly to China which buys most of Ecuador’s oil.”

The reader is meant to understand that Correa is recklessly increasing “social spending” through massive public borrowing from China. How did a story purportedly about an innovative program to marry new mobile telephony technology and a new digital currency to bring banking services to the rural poor suddenly include this gratuitous attack on Correa? Because any excuse will do if you piss off the Brits by giving sanctuary to Mr. Assange.

Greetings from Bogota where I’m participating in an economic conference and teaching two class sessions.

Under the banner “Latin America News” the Wall Street Journal has poured out its pain that the people of Ecuador might reelect President Rafael Correa. The article is actually an editorial attacking Correa and the people of Ecuador for potentially voting to reelect Ecuador’s most successful President in the modern era.

The issue is term limits. I have always opposed term limits as an obstruction to democracy and competence. The U.S. had no presidential term limits for most of its history and the only president the population chose to elect to more than two terms was Franklin Delano Roosevelt – one of our greatest presidents. I am deeply thankful that our Nation had the great good sense to reelect FDR to four terms in office.

In my prior column I discussed the U.S. media frenzy that arose when a leaked emails revealed that Martha Roldos, a leading politician in Ecuador who (very badly) lost an election contest with President Correa, was trying to obtain funding from an infamous United States group that goes by the Orwellian name National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The U.S. media responded with three memes. Roldos is the “victim” first of a theft of her emails by someone unknown (but with the U.S. media presenting a fact-free assertion that it was Correa’s administration followed by a “take back” sentence using the magic “if”). See my first column for the full context.

If the Obama administration wanted to improve relations with Latin America the most obvious move would be to seek closer ties with Ecuador. Ecuador has been transformed into a nation with a stable political system, a head of state reelected by enormous margins in free elections, substantial economic progress, and a pragmatic development program. That program embraces policies that even the Washington Consensus praised that focus government expenditures on health, education, and infrastructure. The policies also champion an idea most identified with the conservative economist Hernando de Soto – making it far easier for entrepreneurs to start new businesses. President Correa is the leader who continues to surprise his friends and foes by taking steps that make economic sense even if they are identified with the “right” while keeping a relentless focus on the needs of the poor. That focus on the poor comes from Correa’s Catholic social justice beliefs that the Pope has recently been returning to centrality.

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The Wall Street Journal has written it’s latest “just so” article about how leftist Latin American leaders (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) are bad and rightist Latin American leaders (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) are wonderful. It quotes favorably this dismissal of progressive leaders.

“’We set out to create the Pacific Alliance because we wanted to set ourselves apart from the populists,’ said Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former Peruvian finance minister. ‘We wanted a thinking man’s axis.’”

No thinking women, allowed, of course. Dr. Michelle Bachelet just busted the “axis” by being re-elected President of Chile by a large margin. No one intelligent, of course, could be a progressive, at least that is what the right claims.

Gustavo Coronel, a Venezuelan oil oligarch associated with Cato has written to let me know how much he despises Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa. Coronel serves as his own “official scorer” so he has declared that one of my columns “made a failed attempt to whitewash the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who is violating environmentally fragile areas of the Amazonia to drill for oil.” This is a passing strange comment from a man whose professional life was spent growing wealthy by “violating environmentally fragile areas of the Amazonia [and elsewhere] to drill for oil.” You may think that Coronel reached a late-life epiphany and is seeking to make up for a life violating environmentally fragile areas, but no such transformation occurred. Coronel simply sees an opportunity to attack Correa, and Coronel has dedicated his remaining life to attacking any Latin American leader who opposes the oligarchs.

The Economist has increasingly been copying the descent of the Wall Street Journal into dogma. One of it perennial hates is President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Correa, an economist, has committed the unforgivable offense of succeeding through economic policies that The Economist despises. This is passing strange because Correa’s four foundational policies are expanded health care, expanded education, improved infrastructure, and encouraging entrepreneurs by reducing the time and cost of starting a business in Ecuador. The Economists’ pages are littered with praise for right-wing governmental leaders and candidates who promise that they will implement those same four policies (but rarely do in practice). Correa has actually delivered on his promises – quickly – and the improvements in the economy of Ecuador and the lives of ordinary citizens have been huge. The result is that Correa is the second most popular head of state in the Americas.